1) Leigh Nash, “The Tide, Vol. 1” / Leigh Nash possesses one of the true voices of my life. At the front of Sixpence None the Richer, her ethereal voice drew from deep inner reserves to deliver songs that are dark and dreamy, romantic and tinged with myths about love and motion. On her new EP, Nash gathers a wonderful group—Ruby Amanfu, Vince Gill, Tanya Tucker and more—for a series of collaborations that expresses a dynamic range of emotion and interest. Nash’s voice unifies the project and both lightens and darkens its corners, depending on what the song requires.
2) Mac McCaughan, “The Sound of Yourself” / The longtime Superchunk leader and indie-rock team captain offers up a solo record that’s esoteric, expansive and, ultimately, satisfying. McCaughan digs into atmospheric sounds that border on ambient pop and artful jazz, alternately sprawling and buzzy visions of indie rock and tones that land everywhere between. It’s all united by the curiosity of an artist who has laurels to rest on, but set them aside.
3) Jesse Malin /, “Sad and Beautiful World” / Perhaps one of the great, underrated songwriters of his generation, Malin brings a punk history and a balladeer’s heart to songs that play shadows and light, loneliness and affirmation. His new double album offers further evidence of a songwriter who holds compassion for his audience.
4) Josh Ritter, “The Great Glorious Goddamn Of It All” / Quietly, almost sneakily, Josh Ritter has become one of my favorite songwriters over the past few years. Wrenching ballads like “Girl in the War,” starry-eyed love songs like “Kathleen,” winking folk-rockers like “Getting Ready to Get Down”—the man has range. That range spills over into his work as a novelist; his most recent book is the exhalation and exclamation its title suggests. Tracing the full life of a young man who grows up like a strange sort of tree among lumberjacks and roughnecks, Ritter writes larger-than-life characters and rhapsodies to the highs and lows of living.
5) Sarah Welch-Larson, “Finding Grace in Screen Violence” for Think Christian / I enjoyed, but didn’t fully appreciate, the new Chvrches record until reading this dispatch from my smart, perceptive friend Sarah Welch-Larson. Digging into themes of horror, pop culture and the social legalism foisted on women, Welch-Larson offers up both an excellent piece of music writing and a chance for readers to pause and take a breath of grace in the middle of a world that wants to drown out the soul.